The below is from a dissertation in process.It is copyright Geoffrey Barto,
2000-2002.

If Hugo's advocacy of patent laws showed an interest in
workers as creators and innovators who added a value to work beyond the time
spent, his reaction to the Ateliers Nationaux makes
clearer his belief that the dignity of workers was earned, not inherent, and
that a healthy society was not to help workers by passing out jobs - i.e. the
state directing the means of production - but by fostering a climate in which
industry could thrive and be rewarded at all levels:

Hugo's personal view of the Ateliers Nationaux
is recorded in the Chosesvues, but it is his public view that is most
noteworthy.This view was given in a
speech to the AssembléNationale
on June 20, 1848.However the speech is less remembered for its
content than its part in what we now call the June Days.The Ateliers Nationauxwere created under the direction of Louis Blanc, an
ardent socialist whose consolation for not receiving a post in Lamartine's government was their creation and
direction.It was intended that the
unemployed would go to the workshops to work on government projects.However, while projects lay dormant in the
countryside for want of workers, 100,000 workers in Paris
were being paid to do nothing, even as the Republic collapsed under its own
financial weight.In debate about the
workshops, Hugo found himself caught in the middle, even as he had been in
February - he was sympathetic to the aims of the left, but felt they had pushed
to far; he distrusted and disliked the right but saw the logic of their
arguments.Hugo would brag that he had
no political party to answer to, only the people of France.But the boast was problematic:while it enabled him to hold the trust and
admiration of the people of Paris,
it hampered his ability to act on their behalf.On 20 June, it left him unable to rally the Assembly to a reasonable
position, but perfectly capable of giving those he opposed the ammunition to
carry out their plans.In Hugo's speech,
he denounced the workshops as a waste of money and talent, but worst of all as
a threat to the dignity of workers and the value of honest work:

Hugo wanted to encourage the workers to find work in the
countryside while the disgrace of the workshops was ended.So did the right, which he opposed.Hugo’s position, however, was motivated by
concern for, not hostility to, the workers; such was not the case with the
right.

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Hugo was at odds with his friends on the left especially in
means, however:Even as Hugo called
himself "socialist," he stood opposed to the idea of the class
struggle, to the leveling of income and property, to the aims with which we
today associate socialism.Hugo did not
believe in the inherent dignity of being a worker - or even a human being; this
dignity was a thing to be earned through labor and accomplishment; it was not
the government's job to provide a wage, but to foster an environment in which
workers could thrive and prosper.To
that end, Hugo explicitly rejected the idea of revolution, and of seizing
private property, warning that the poor would not become rich because the rich
were made poor, and stability would not come to the marginalized because the
well-placed were upset.Describing the
results of destabilizing revolts, Hugo says:

On every count in his speech, Hugo was betrayed:The right took his critique of the Ateliers
as justification for closing them down, making use of his opposition for
political cover.At the same time, the
left took the closing of the workshops as an excuse for a new revolution, not
an indication that they needed a new approach to achieving the aims the 1848
Revolution had already failed to satisfy.As with February (when the left would not join Hugo in moving for change
within the July Monarchy), the left may have even been initially glad for the
excuse to revolt.However, in short
order their hopes for a new order would be shattered.Indeed, Cavaignac
restored order brutally but quickly and found himself almost as quickly in
power; by the end of the year, he would be replaced by Louis-Napoléon.Hugo,
always seeking stability, was incensed by the actions of the left and did his
duty as an Assemblyman in helping suppress the revolts, even as he had earlier
defended the monarchy and regency.

* * *

We have hear already considered
Hugo’s very public pronouncement on the workshops and questioned its socialist
character.We should however further
consider his private comments:

Hugo, mindful of the threats to the worker, was here also
fearful that though the workers had been had for the moment, would soon figure
out that the joke was on them.This, to
Hugo, was as great a threat to order and stability as the closing of the
workshops would have been.Graham Robb’s
description of Hugo’s speech as a “moderate success” that would become a
“personal disaster” is accurate (His family’s safety was threatened, his
apartment damaged, even as he was left to help suppress revolts in another
quarter; after, Mme. Hugo would insist on moving and Hugo would find himself
living with his wife, of course, but only a few blocks from two
mistresses).But in Hugo’s mind, the
damage might have been less since disaster was inevitable regardless.

* * *

The two sides of Hugo’s approaches to work from 1847-1848 do
not show a socialist, but neither do they show a simple capitalist leaving all
to the market.Instead, they reveal a
complex perception of the way the world ought to work.Inherent in them is the belief that all can
be lifted up – or ought to be lifted up – by the fruits of their labors.It is a complex story – it took Hugo more
than a thousand pages to tell it in Les Misérables
– but is an important one, showing again the thought of an author constructing
an ideal world, not that of a politician constructing a program.Hugo was perhaps aware of this; in his June 20, 1848 speech, he noted:

He then noted that, “socialiste, moi-même, c’est aux socialistesimpatientsquejem’adresse,”
in calling on them to not further upset things.On December 8, 1848,
Hugo would again situate the problem in the people, and note that government
action would have to be directed toward uplifting the people indirectly, not
directly:

It is this program of action that Hugo described in Les Misérables, but with its invocation of God, its call
for the renewal of man, it is a not a socialist program, making some homo
novo or Soviet man, it is a call for redemption and for creating the
educated citizens of Jeffersonian democracy; in short, it is socialism because
it ameliorates the condition of man in the social sphere.

What Hugo foretold in Les Misérables,
has come to pass in its own way.The
sort of patent and copyright law he favored are the basis today for Bill Gates’
Microsoft, Ross Perot’s EDS and countless other innovations by entrepreneurs
allowed to use their vision to transform the world in the same way that Jean Valjean/M. Madeleine transformed Montreuilsur Mer.His
call for the dignity of workers and improvement of the lot of man have in many
ways come to pass.And yet the
statements he made about paying workers to drink coffee could appear in a
modern welfare debate in any of the nations leading democracies.Yet what Hugo sought was a means of bettering
society by allowing people to better themselves; the
government program to make them better was only to be effected indirectly.And so, as in so many cases, Hugo stands as
either a visionary or a failed politician.His speech of June 20, 1848, especially, called less for a new political
program than for a new narrative for France; the speech stands as ineffective,
helping to set in motion a disaster for France instead of the legislative
moderation and pragmatism it called for.And yet, it stands along side Les Misérables
as well as numerous other speeches as a call to a new social order which has
gradually come to pass in ways great and small.And it appears that in resolving the question of whether Hugo was a
visionary or a failed politician, the answer is surely:both.